We're grateful for the positive feedback we've received from our garden centre projects! These testimonials remind us of the impact thoughtful design can have on creating inviting and functional spaces for clients like Haskins Garden Centres, Blooms of Bressingham, Rosebourne, Dobbies Garden World, Frosts Garden Centres, and Fairweathers Garden Centres. These projects covered everything from garden centre expansions, new build garden centres, garden centre rebranding, foodservice additions, and feasibility studies for new garden centre franchises. As experts in the design & build of garden centres, each kind word inspires us to keep pushing boundaries and delivering excellence in every project.
"They are very straightforward people to work with. If, after further explanation from them, we still don't like something they have put forward, they don't take offence. They don't continue to argue their corner but concentrate on fighting ours."
- Warren Haskins, Chairman of Haskins Garden Centres
"Always flexible and pro-active, the team provides a hands on approach to the architectural process of designing and delivering our on-going development needs. Whether a small makeover or large scale redevelopment, HPW act as a key consultant working in tandem with our operational team, contractors and suppliers. We enjoy a very open relationship with HPW and see them as an integral part of our innovative and strategic approach to developing our sites."
- Jon Kitching, Former CEO of Blooms of Bressingham and CEO of Rosebourne
"We became aware of HPW because they had done what we felt were good fit-outs and design work for a couple of large garden centres that we had visited. So I guess we said to ourselves, that looks interesting, maybe we should have a bit of that! HPW have been good at forcing us to look at new and innovative ways of laying out our stores and merchandising our stock. A recent example is our floristry offer at a new garden centre, currently the largest in the UK, which raises the whole profile of the whole cut flower operation within a garden centre. It's a large, imposing feature that is very much "in your face" as you enter the store and has an inbuilt cooling system. Initially the proposal went into the "can we afford it?" category, but HPW persuaded us to run with it and it has turned out very well. Overall they are constantly coming up with new ideas. They look at what's happening in the wider retail industry and feed back ideas to us from that."
- James Barnes, Dobbies Garden World
"HPW are prepared to point out where they believe things will work and where they wouldn't. They aren't afraid of speaking up, and if there was an issue that needed tackling head on, then they would do that for us. That confidence is based on an ability to understand and interpret a great deal of information which they take on board from us. In coordinating a project, HPW are particularly good at pushing things forward and cutting unnecessary costs."
- Martin Taylor, Frosts Garden Centres
"We were attracted to HPW because they had experience in other retail sectors and could therefore bring fresh thinking to our garden centre project from other environments. We wanted a firm whose architectural skills would be sympathetic to our location in a conservation area but we needed to be able to look to HPW to apply contemporary retailing standards to that environment. Archaeological observations were going on while the foundations were being dug so HPW had to deal with all the legal requirements that were imposed on us by the planners. They took responsibility for seeing the whole project through from design to build with a very flexible approach. They had to address a lot of practical issues as the project progressed, issues associated with adding a modern extension onto a listed 150-year-old building. I suppose the whole theme of the extension they created is unusual in that to sell plants from the structure we had to have high levels of light. So it had to be a glazed structure but, unusually for garden centre buildings, HPW suggested we went for a traditional oak framed construction. It meant a significantly higher investment compared to the usual "greenhouse" but it combines longevity, sound commercial judgement in terms of sales performance, with the right look which demonstrated to the planners that we were sympathetic to our environment."
- Patrick Fairweather, Fairweathers Carden Centres
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